At the recent Caricom Heads of Government meeting which finished last Friday, regional leaders acknowledged that there was little progress on resolving the issue, and tasked the Committee of Ministers of Finance on Correspondent Banking to maintain the current high level engagement.
But, that engagement has gotten them nowhere so far. On Friday in Barbados the President of the Caribbean Development Bank said that regional banks need to find a way to certify their worthiness:
Warren Smith, President CDB
"I don't think we're at the stage yet where we could honestly say that there is an end in sight to this crisis. But I think one thing that is emerging is that where we could concentrate as a region is on trying to ensure that our environment, our banking environment, our financial environment is brought up to a standard where the risk of being blacklisted by the correspondent banks is minimized. And one of the things that we have advocated and I think that we are quite prepared to provide assistance in this regard, financial assistance is to have an entity like the Caribbean financial sector task force to work with the jurisdictions, our country jurisdictions to help them to identify weaknesses and mechanisms that they could deploy to strengthen the quality of their jurisdictions."
"Some countries are at greater risk than others. Your country, Belize is perhaps one of the most affected and the need for a solutions I urgent. But, I'm pretty confident that at the end of the matter is one that is tractable and that a solution will be found."
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